U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Review One of the Most Extreme Abortion Bans in the Nation

Arkansas’ ban on abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy to remain permanently blocked. Order comes two months after Supreme Court agrees to review Texas’ deceptive clinic shutdown law

01.19.16 - (PRESS RELEASE)
The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to review Arkansas’ blatantly
unconstitutional ban on abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy—allowing a May 2015 ruling
from an appellate court striking the measure to stand.

“Arkansas
politicians cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they want to
uphold,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive
Rights. “The Supreme Court has never wavered in affirming that every
woman has a right to safely and legally end a pregnancy in the U.S—and this
extreme abortion ban was a direct affront to that right.

“We now
look to the Justices to ensure Texas women are not robbed of their health,
dignity, and rights under false pretenses and strike down the state’s deceptive
clinic shutdown law currently under review.”

Today’s order
comes just over two months after the Supreme Court agreed
to review Texas’s clinic shutdown law— a measure that has already shuttered
half of the abortion providers in Texas, and is poised to leave the nation’s
second-largest state with 10 or fewer abortion clinics.

The U.S. Supreme
Court has consistently held—first
in Roe v. Wade and
again most recently in Planned
Parenthood v. Casey—that women have a constitutional right to
decide whether to end or continue a pregnancy and states cannot ban abortion
prior to viability. The Supreme Court refused to review a decision permanently blocking Arizona’s
ban on abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy in 2014, and courts in Idaho and
Georgia have also recently blocked similar pre-viability bans. In late
2015, North
Dakota asked the Supreme Court to review a similarly unconstitutional
measure which bans abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy.

“Arkansas
cannot veto a woman’s decision to have an abortion, period,” said Talcott Camp,
deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “This personal,
medical decision rests with a woman, her family, and her doctor – not
politicians. We are gratified but unsurprised that the Court found nothing
worthy of their review in this case.”

Arkansas’ SB 134
bans abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy with only narrow exceptions in certain
cases of rape, incest, and medical emergencies. SB 134 was enacted in March
2013—just two days after Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe vetoed the measure—when both houses in the state
legislature voted to override his veto. The Center for
Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and ACLU of Arkansas filed
suit in April 2013 against the ban on behalf of two physicians who provide
abortions in Little Rock. A federal district judge permanently struck
down the ban in March 2014, saying the extreme measure would “prevent a
woman’s constitutional right to elect to have an abortion before
viability.” The U.S Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit permanently blocked
the ban in May 2015; Arkansas asked the Supreme Court to review the appellate
court’s decision earlier this fall.